Your Mind Matters – Laura Doyle, Struggle Of The Lonely Passionate Artist

I guess it's funnier from where you're standing, because over here I miss the joke. Clear the way for my crash landing. I've done it again. Another number for your notes. I'd be smiling if I wasn't so desperate. I'd be patient if I had the time. I could stop and answer all of your questions as soon as I find out how I can move from the back of the line. I'll be your clown behind the glass. Go ahead and laugh, because it's funny. I would too if I saw me. I'd be your clown on your favorite channel. My life's a circus, circus, round in circles. I'm selling out tonight. I'd be less angry if it was my decision and the money was just rolling in. If I had more than my ambition, I'd have time for please. I'll have time for thank yous. As soon as I win. This song is the— is by the extraordinary talent of Emily Sandé and is pertinent to all performers at some point. We're all born with the potential to become magnificent human beings. Somewhere along our life journey, we all need to express our unique selves. I'm Dr. Maria Kempinska, a deep psychotherapist, and my aim is to find my client's personal genius. That's what the Greeks called their daemon. This lies within Jung's archetype of the self. It is that part of the psyche which harbours their uniqueness and their individuality. It is through the talking cure and looking at dreams the client uncovers who they really are and are no longer at the beck and call of their complexes, which are the emotional triggers of our past. When we make the connection to ourself, we can recognise who we are beneath the layers of our psychic structure. Of our ego, our persona, our shadow, our complexes, and our defense mechanisms, which are constantly at play. We cannot recognize this confusion of interplay unless we have a qualified deep therapist to mirror back the conscious and unconscious behavior. In the long term, the process of individuals becomes awakened, and the therapist becomes the anchor and guide through the forest of the mind. To create order out of chaos, but mostly to help the client recognize their self. It is in the archetype of the self that creativity resides. I believe we're all creative. We can all make something out of nothing. As the Oxford English Dictionary defines, it is the product from nothing of ideas and objects that are both novel or original and worthwhile or appropriate. That is, useful, attractive, meaningful, or correct. But not all of us have talent or the drive to make our gifts seen and appreciated by others. And in which field does our talent lie? Is it art, design, sports, comedy, writing, music, acting, presenting, or singing? And then what's it take to be a performer, to show off that talent in front of an audience? This needs a style, a skill that is honed for that particular purpose, a stage presence, and a laborious skill at finding words. It appears glamorous, and by the time the performer gets on stage, most of the hard work has been done, so it looks easy and enviable. But in reality, there can often be those moments where the artist falls into the hole between the oceanic audience connections— connection of performance— and the extreme emptiness once the performance is over. This can be likened to Melanie Klein's theory of the depressive position, which a baby experiences early in their lives when they begin to crawl and learn that they are separate from their mother. In those moments of early separation from the mother, before a baby learns to find safety within, there are anxious moments which can lead to long-term depression. John Bowlby named the attachment theory This is embedded within the child's psyche depending on the caregiver's stable or inconsistent response to the baby's needs. This personal attachment experience is replayed and activated when a performer comes off stage. That moment can amplify the initial loss and can activate feelings of sadness, mourning, and even despair. As a performer, the audience can become the symbolic mother who is attentive and adoring, This performance state is so emotionally intense that it can become addictive. The feeling is totally absorbing, and the need for that feeling can take over. During the live performance, the artist's ego inflates, and at times to a Daedalus grandiose status, which, like the fall of Daedalus, is quickly deflated after the show. The feeling is totally absorbing, it takes one over, and if there's a small sign of success, it can give a feeling of completeness. Of being valued, but the drive can cripple the performer, and the depressive state can overwhelm and make the performer turn to drink and drugs to keep them protected. Whatever the theoretical terms which help the psychotherapist understand the state of the client, it is the artist who has the experience, which needs help to be put into perspective. My work is both in the creative and business sectors where pressures are intense. How does the artist cope with the performance, with success, with a creative drive which can in itself debilitate? What happens to the talented creative music artist who is driven to perform as not only a means of expression but also as a means to entertain and to earn a living, when at the end of the evening the result is loneliness and emptiness after all their psychic and creative energy has been spent on stage and resulting in an immense void. Today my guest is Laura Doyle, who is juggling two careers and has great success in one and is destined for stardom in the other. She will help identify some of the answers from her experiences. This is Your Mind Matters, and today's subject is the struggle of the lonely passionate artist. Welcome, Laura. Can you give everyone an overview of your background? Hello there, Maria. Thanks for having me on the show. Well, there's so much to unpick in that introduction there because I identified so much with it. And an overview of my life is, is just seems to be one of separation after separation after separation as I've tried to to move forward. I started off studying languages and politics at university, which was the first move away from what I think was my true calling and my true identity, which was as an entertainer, to entertain, to perform. That was what I was doing since I could crawl, since I could speak. I would entertain classrooms of bodies at 4 years old and put on shows for the dinner ladies and the teachers and It was the continued theme throughout my childhood and my adolescence, and then bam, at 18 years old, I decide to go and study politics and languages at university because of that old, well-worn cliché that teachers would pull up again and again. Well, you know, you're never going to be successful at that. There's no money. You know, it takes a lot to become a successful entertainer, so you're always going to need something to fall back on. So off I went to do something that didn't appeal to me and wasn't my passion, and, you know, I spent years therefore then searching almost for myself. You know, how can you have something to fall back on? It's— you've sort of fallen back into yourself, if you like. So One thing led to another, and then I continued down this path of politics, languages, international relations, and I think that comes down to another part of me. It's that when you start something, you work hard and you see it through to the end. And it was only coming eventually full circle after years and years of being involved in international relations, working with the European Commission, working with diplomatic services, overseas, then going into PR and marketing, and then into football, that this calling, this vocation to entertain, just kept pulling me back, pulling me back, pulling me back, till I eventually, many, many years later, decided to finally answer the call. And here I am now on this Next chapter, is it? Or the final part of the trilogy? I don't know. Yeah, but it's so interesting because let's just make it clear for the listeners that you are both a football agent and you're very successful. That is your day-to-day career, but you're also a singer and you're a songwriter. You've created your own band and you're developing that side of your talent. When you've gone through all the learning you've gone through, although it's very common, as you say, that people are told when they're teenagers, oh my goodness, it's very hard to make it in the world of showbiz. I mean, there are more opportunities, let's face it, than there ever were. However, having said that, it is still a struggle. Not all talent makes it because it needs lots of other components to be successful, but we'll come to that shortly. But did you find everything that you've learned has helped you along the way to this point? Absolutely. I draw on every single aspect of my life now with my languages, my diplomatic experience, my experience in sport, what I've learned guiding young talent to become elite athletes to become superstars at the top of their game, training with comedy and clowning. And, you know, even I, I was an air hostess at one point, you know. I've been taught jungle survival and, you know, anti-terrorism training, you know. We've, we've had the lot, we've had the lot. And how to deal with a crowd and how to, you know, there's there's just so much to draw on, it almost becomes difficult for me to then, you know, settle into one genre, if you like. Yeah. You know, am I, you know, am I a serious jazz artist, or am I more of a Marty Cain type of performer, you know, telling jokes? Is it more cabaret? Is it— so You know, it's trying to weave your way. And isn't it difficult? I mean, as an agent, you guide your footballers. Tell us, give us a little bit of an overview of the type of footballers you represent. Well, I started my career with foreign players about 10, 11 years ago. The price of footballers, the top end of their game, was just going up and up and up and up, you know, €60 million, €70 million, €80 million for a transfer of a player. And clubs started to reassess their business models, I guess, because they thought, you know, we can't go on buying these players in this way, so we need to look at younger talent, scout the best talent around the world, around Europe, bring them in at a younger age, 16, 17, to develop them and almost take a punt on that. Because by bringing 10 youngsters in, even if one of them only came through, it would be cheaper than having to pay £80 million for, for a top-flight player. So my job was assisting clubs and other agents in finding these players and signing them, bringing them over to this country, and then I would act almost as like a soft landing agent helping the players and their families to adapt to this country. They invariably didn't speak English, everything was new to them, they were suddenly just dropped in, just helicoptered in and into this strange land, and my job was to facilitate that transition, to make it as smooth as possible with the clubs and the families, because one thing the player has when they arrive here is is a solid support structure, but the families are often left to fend for themselves. And if the families are upset, the players are upset, and if the player's not performing, the club's not able to develop them. And it was this, you know, sort of structure that involved not just one player, but a whole host of people in order to drive that success and that investment. And are they male or female players? They're male players. So I've worked predominantly in men's football for the last 12, 13 years. And is that unusual? How many women are there in the men's football world? Very few, very few. Now, when I started, I was, I was the only one, I think. Possibly there may have been one or two that I didn't know about would do my role. They didn't even have people in clubs doing my role. At the time. It was almost considered a luxury to have something like that, but, you know, I quickly gained ground because, you know, even as a woman in a man's world, what I did, my job, was vital for all of those people to do their jobs. And it was a real baptism of fire, but I learned so much that within a very short space of time, I managed to, I would say, turn a lot of these people's careers around, if you like. Yeah. In those early days, they didn't have that facility. Yeah, and as you said, they come in as teenagers, but you look after the families as well. And as you say, excuse me, the knock-on effect from the family to the footballer is immense. Sometimes your role would be, you wouldn't know what you're going to face when you walk through the door. You had to wear so many different hats, right, and be almost like a chameleon depending on what the particular problem was, what their need was, what their cultural background was, what their language was. And I'd often find myself like a parish priest. Yes, I was going to say. So you are in fact like a counsellor for them, a counsellor and a mediator as well, I presume, between them and the football club and so on. And yet you've still got to keep them on board, haven't you? Because they could— would they quite simply could get up and go back if they didn't like where they were? Yeah, or they could move to a different agent, and so One thing about being a football agent is you permanently have this sword of Damocles over your head because, you know, you've got to look after your clients, you've got to keep them happy, and sometimes that's a very, very delicate balance because you're also dealing with their egos and their demands. And, you know, as a professional, you can see what's best for them, for their development, for their career. And sometimes that can be at odds with what they want or what they believe they need. And, you know, you have to guide them through so many minefields, if you like, and also other people wanting to pull them in different directions and turn their head with offers of, you know, instant fame or quick stardom or mega books, and that might not necessarily be the path for them. And you've got to say no, rather than take this offer where your salary is going to triple, you need to stay here for another 12 months earning a lot less because it's better for your development. And, you know, it's, um, it can be a minefield sometimes. And you have to have support though. Well, I work for a big agency which, although now it's the biggest agency in the world, it still has that lovely family approach. It's a family-run business, started as a family-run business, and, you know, they had this model of managing from the bottom up. Everyone mattered, everyone's opinion counted, and you could always pick up the phone to anyone at the the top director in the company, and if you needed anything at all, you would always have their support. So, you know, I was blessed in that way to have been thrown, you know, to the lions some days. But then, you know, I did— I had my gladiators behind me when the going got tough. When you needed it. So, yes, there was something I didn't know. What was the common problem? Did you find? Because now you're talking— in a way, footballers are much like any artist. They have to perform. Yeah, yeah. Because if they don't perform, I presume they are only given so many opportunities. Yes, they're developing, but they, you know, on the field, if they don't perform, I presume they're not going to play anymore. Yeah, that's true. And, and that's where, you know, I often say to them, 95% of my success is down to you. I can do everything for you except kick a ball, except train. I can give you advice, I can guide you, we can watch all of your games, we provide statistics, poach match analysis, we can study everything, we can develop a career plan for you, we can do all of those things. Psychologists, we provide psychologists everything. They have every single thing they need, but if they then don't put in the work, or if they develop, you know, a bad attitude towards it, then, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing we can do about that. We can pull them up on it and say, hey, look, you know, you need to, to book your ideas up, you need to train more, you need to, you need to start eating, to ditch the junk food, you need to— but at the end of the day, like anything in life, it's down to the individual. So you have been an agent for others. You've, of course, you've developed yourself as time's gone on. You're immensely gifted intellectually. You've got all that capacity to learn languages, and you have a wonderful ability to communicate. And now You're still working as an agent, but also you're developing your own talent and performing. Can you tell everybody about your performance and your— because you write your own music as well, don't you, and you have your own band? Yes, I do. It's called Bajana, which I didn't think was the— when I chose the name, I'm like, right, okay, let's choose the most difficult to pronounce, most difficult to spell, difficult to remember. So we're called Baiana and Baiana is a woman from Bahia, that's what it means and Bahia is a region of Brazil and really my whole life changed when I went to Brazil about 20 years ago. I was involved with the diplomatic service on the European Commission over in Rio de Janeiro and again following the international relations path, when I landed in that country I was just hit with its musicality, the creativity, the color, the passion, the people, and it's one thing that throughout my life never, never left me. I always had this yearning to go back to Brazil. I love the music. I would listen to it morning, noon, and night. Then the calling to be an entertainer, it was always this undercurrent that was always going on in my life. But I never thought of singing. I never thought of music. It just didn't even cross my mind. I enjoyed doing it, but I guess because it came easy to me, I didn't think it was something that I should do. It was always, you know, it must be something else, it must be something else. I'd always loved to make people laugh. I'm from Liverpool, it's in our DNA, you know, you never will meet a Scouser who won't tell you a joke within the first 5 minutes. So I started doing comedy, stand-up comedy, and I ran my own open mic show. Then from there I got into more physical comedy and performance clowning, that type of thing. Off I went to Paris to study clowning with Philippe Gaullier. Mm-hmm. Kept slogging away at this clowning and comedy business, even though it didn't feel right to me. And it was actually in clown school that I had my breakthrough, which I didn't realize at the time, that what I love to do and what came naturally to me was singing, and I would be invited to participate in all these different shows and cabaret nights and variety nights, and people would say to me, "Oh, we'd love you to perform, but can you sing? Can you sing?" I was supposed to do comedy. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but sing, sing instead." So, you know, I suppose over there I discovered I wasn't like— I was a rubbish clown. But I was, you know, I wasn't a half bad singer. So again, coming full circle, it's like I could never go from A to B, I always have to go via LMNOP. I came back and started doing some shows, variety shows with a friend from clown school, a friend I met in clown school in Paris. And he asked me to sing on some of his shows and I was doing French chansons and And one day I said, "Do you know what I'd love to do? What I'd love to do is some Brazilian jazz." And, you know, "Oh, you know, it's quite niche that, isn't it?" "Yeah, but I'd love to do it just to see how it feels and just to have that experience. It's my passion." And I prepared 3 songs. It was the first time I'd ever sang live with musicians, real musicians. Rather than a backing track. And it was like a road to Damascus. It just— that night, just everything just came hurtling down on top of me. How this is what I want to do, this is what I was meant to do, this makes me feel alive, this makes me happy, this is everything I want to be and everything I want to do. Amazing. And you do write your own material, don't you, now? Yes, I do. I started off, like everybody, even The Beatles started off doing covers. I do know, I think covers are still always a good thing because it gives you an ability to distinguish your own voice and for people to hear how your voice differs. So I think that's quite common, and you've got to find your feet as a performer anyway, haven't you? No, absolutely. But it gives you that opportunity. Yeah. No, we still do covers now in our shows as we're developing our portfolio of songs, if you like. So, you know, we started writing, it was in the, it was about a month before the first lockdown that we wrote our first song, our original song, and released that in It was July— gosh, where are the years now? When did we have our lockdown? Was it 2019? 2020. 2020, yeah. 2020. So, you know, once I knew that's what I wanted to do, I thought, I'm not happy with just doing other people's works, other songs. I mean, the COVID songs are beautiful, but I wanted to then put my stamp on it and give, bring my voice and, you know, show the world what I had inside me that's just been like a pressure cooker bursting to get out all these, all of these years. So we, when we were talking before the program and I said, oh, you sound like you're Carmen Miranda, and she was a like '50s, '40s, '50s performer. And that made sense to you. And that's how I picked up from you who you are, because when I listen to your music, it's that you— it is so joyful and it's so, you know, you just want to dance. It's that part of the world that you see festivals and colors and, you know, everything comes, becomes alive. Is that your intention? Is that what pleases you? Absolutely. That's everything, everything that we're about, everything that I'm about as a performer, and I want to make music that, that, well, our catchphrase is music that moves your body and your soul, and I want to move people emotionally, and of course joy is a great emotion, and I like to move people with, you know, other songs as well, sort of slower ballads, but that people will always find joy or identify with in some way. You know, even a, even a sad song will have a happy ending. Yeah, and it can be a release for people. It's that connection. It's, you know, the soul speaks through music, and you can have a connection with somebody and it can actually release something. It can be very cathartic. So I hear that. That's wonderful. So how long have you actually been performing more consistently? Well, we— before, obviously before the lockdown, we were performing regularly with— by Anna for about a year. Yeah. And we were really hitting our stride and we were building up a head of steam and then Of course, you know, the global bacteriological world war started. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which really pulled— Yeah, it was tough because it really pulled the rug from under us as we had a 2-week residency at the Edinburgh Festival planned. We were going to do a series of big showcases in London. We had a sponsor on board and we were, yay, you know, So many big plans and, you know, that all disappeared overnight, but then, like I think you've probably heard so many artists and musicians and writers saying, it turned out to be for them a good and very productive time because it gave them that opportunity to sit down and to write and, you know, I spoke to Jesse Egan, our bass player in the band, and we were like so frustrated that we couldn't perform and twiddling our thumbs, so we said, right, let's get into the studio, let's get into the studio and start writing. And then we would go meet together 1 or 2 days a week, but very disciplined, you know, like we'd go in at 10 and we'd work all day, we'd just have a quick break for lunch and we wrote and we wrote and we wrote and we wrote. And from that we got our, the last 3 singles. And discipline, you said. How, I mean, you are a disciplined person, I take it, because to do the work you do as a football agent, you have to have a certain amount of discipline because you're a self-starter. Yeah, yeah. And it sounds as if in your life you make decisions quickly and you act on those decisions. How important is it in the world of music to be like that as well? I think it's vital in the same way as it is in sport. Like I was saying to you before about the football player, you can have the greatest player in the world, super talented, but unless they're disciplined and they put in the work, then they won't necessarily make it, or they won't do their talent justice, or they won't get the maximum from their talents to what they could. And, you know, you have to have discipline and time, put in the time and be dedicated, simply in order to produce, to practice, to— to develop. How do you know when you've produced something that is worthy of performing to an audience? Because it's the same with a footballer really, isn't it? Because a footballer practices his skills and then he has to go out on the field. He's a part of a big team and can occasionally— the striker will stand out, you know, the ones that score. I presume the ones that score the goals stand out. But as a performer, you are the main focus of the stage. How do you know that a song is ready to perform? Well, I suppose that's, you know, to use the analogy of the team, it's like, yes, I'm the striker, I'm the centre forward, and then Jesse on bass is the right back, and Mickey on guitar is the left back, and, you know, so you also rely on on your team around you and their expertise and their instinct when we're playing it, it's kind of, you know, there's that complicity between you, that understanding, and when you're, you know, you're putting the energy into it, there will be some songs that, you know, Jesse and I were like, "Yeah, yeah, you know, this is really good, this is the one," and then when we performed it, it didn't quite work out. It was like a tactic or a move that didn't quite come off. But when it does work, you just know. A kind of instinct kicks in, even when a song is in its roughest state and its simplest demo state, you get a feeling from it and you know. Do you ever feel if that piece of work, you know, like I've I know about artists, they sometimes tear up their old art if they're not happy with it. Do you ever go, "Oh my God," or do you ever feel so deeply involved with the piece of work that you've written that you personally feel rejected when the audience doesn't take to it in the way you want them to, or hoped they would? Yeah, sometimes you do, because you wouldn't be human if you didn't. But that's one thing I took from my experience in comedy, is that it's never the audience's fault. You can't blame an audience's reaction to something. You know, it might not be their cup of tea. I could go and see, or someone could take me to go and see a thrash metal band. They could be the best thrash metal band in the whole world, but that is not my cup of tea. Yeah, it doesn't matter. They're not gonna like it. Yeah. So, it could be that. It's just not their thing. Or, it just could be, you know, you haven't got something quite right with that, or you've put it in a different place in the set. Like, we have a song coming out in March called Saudade Samba, and it's one of 3 songs that we recorded with Snowboy. He's a very famous Latin percussionist and producer. He's worked with Amy Winehouse and Skinny Fred. Yeah, he's absolutely phenomenal. And I've saved this song, it's the last of the 3 for us to release, because I think it's, for me, it's the most exciting of the 3 songs that we've made with him so far, because we are going to be going back into the studio soon to work on an album. But ironically, it's the most difficult song to put in our set. Trying to find the right place for it and the right moment for it because it's very, it's very fragile and it can bring the energy down if it's not in the right place or if it's not performed in the right way. But then as the performer, as the leader, as the frontwoman, that's down to me to decide. You make that choice, do you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, that's why sometimes the reaction to that song might not be what I was expecting, but then that's for me to then work that out. Mm-hmm. And who does, who gives you feedback? Do you purely get it from the response from the audience, or do you have somebody else that watches? With you? Because if you are on the stepping stone, you know, on the ladder up, you don't always have a manager, you don't always have an agent. It's quite a big industry, isn't it? So who gives you the feedback that you actually trust? Number one is always, always your audience, because the audience is very honest. If they don't like it, they won't come and see it, so they won't applaud, they won't— so always, you know, you turn to them to see what they like. Social media is still a dark art for me because success seems to be measured a lot in now number of likes, number of followers, number of this, but— well, it doesn't— that could be a red herring. I think it is for them because they often say, don't they, record labels and publishers often say, well, how many followers do you have? And actually it doesn't always translate to bums on seats, as they say. But as a performer, you're now on stage, you've given your all, you're not only writing, you're working during the day. Let's be clear about your lifestyle here. You must have tremendous energy. You work during the day, you rehearse, you write, you perform on stage as well. Mm-hmm. This is the love that you have. You have that drive, that creative drive, as you said, that urge to share your creativity with the world. You know that this is something the world needs, and actually, frankly, I agree with you. The world does need this, and the world is now much more open to new types of music. They want to integrate with different cultures, and this is the perfect way to do it. And you're on stage When you come off, let's talk about that, that moment of separation, that moment of exhaustion. How do you come out of that? How do you work that out for yourself? You've had a— let's say you've had a really successful show, and which you must have had because clearly you were on the route up. You're getting a sponsor, 2 weeks in Edinburgh is a big deal, you're on your way up, and suddenly you come off the stage and you go home, who's there to pick you up? Who's there to make you feel, oh, it's okay, well done? Who makes a cup of tea for you, basically? Well, this is gonna sound like the sort of pull on the heartstrings response now, because I don't have anyone. I live on my own, you know, and it's kind of— and I'll often say this in my show when people are saying, you know, oh, one more, more, more, and I've done an encore and I've done an encore 'And I say no, that's it, I've got to get home to have a glass of wine and watch Downton Abbey.' Yeah, but do you know what, let's talk about this because— hahaha— and I'm like, no, that's literally what I'm going to do. Yeah, quite. This is not pulling on the heartstrings because, you know, as you know, I've worked in comedy and entertainment for all my life, so I'm sort of like you, split personality, schizophrenic, and I quite like that. But the truth of the matter is you do go home on your own Is that because it's harder for— in the world of comedy, I used to notice that men had many more support from their wives or partners who were female than a woman would have from a male supporter. Is that true of a performer, a music performer? I don't know. I think with me, it's just simply the fact that I'm not in a relationship. Does it make it hard to be in a relationship because of your success in many ways, your ability, your intelligence, your dynamism? Does that make it harder? Possibly because I don't have the time to invest in, you know, looking for a relationship in a modern world, which I feel at odds with because everybody says to you, oh, you know, you have to be online, you have to do online and, you know, swipe left, swipe right, swipe left, and oh, you know, you have to go on so many different dates, just go for a coffee, and you'll have to be, you know, you have to invest in it. It's like trying to find the perfect dress in a charity shop, you have to go through the rails. I haven't got time for that. Yeah, yeah. I haven't got time to go for 10 different coffees with 10 different guys to see if I happen upon, you know, Mr. Right. And the thought of that leaves me cold. But then my life is so full in other areas that, you know, often I don't feel that I miss that because I'm fulfilled in other areas. But then something like a global pandemic can happen to you, and suddenly you're left with a lot of time on your hands, and you realize that, you know, this kind of relationship-shaped hole in your life that you were filling with music, filling with creativity, filling with work, filling with— suddenly becomes glaringly obvious. And therein lies the frustration and the thoughts of, you know, the melancholy creeping in because you simply don't have that outlet. You simply couldn't perform. You couldn't you know, shake off those feelings by singing, by inventing. So I was really glad to get back to the stage. Yeah, but also coming off the stage and going home, do you have that fall? Do you get that sort of crestfallen feel? Oh gosh. I've heard a number of performers say, "Oh gosh, it feels empty." No, I tend not to get that after a performance. If it's a big, big show, I will normally have people around me. I'll have friends or I'll have, you know, supporters. And it's interesting— gosh, speaking of me being the spinster with just her cat, she's now heard that I'm talking about her and is crying at the door. Come in. She's like, you— here she is, your mom has been talking about you. Do you know, for me, it's like I coined this phrase, you know, there's PTSD, I have the PJSD, that which is my post-joyful stress disorder. Yeah, because, you know, if you go through a trauma, I mean, of course, you know, this is obvious, you know, page 1 of the pamphlet for your training. Any kind of trauma, you know, you want to talk about it again and again and again and relive that moment in order to deal with it, in order to exercise it. You know, people will just keep saying, repeating the same trauma in different ways to eliminate it. And I find that when you'd come off stage for, you know, a bigger show or a festival or something where the energy was off the scale, you know, you want to relive it and you want to talk about it and you want to say, "Oh, remember that bit?" and "What about that bit?" and, you know, this sort of dissection of it afterwards. And the times when I've felt bad is when I've finished a show like that and everyone's gone, "Great, see you," and they've gone to get the train or the tube or got to get up in the morning and you're kind of left and you're sort of high with that energy. You can't go to bed and you, you know, that's when sometimes social media is good because then you can go online and interact with people who've been to see the show. But it's that, it's that energy, because energy can be a positive or negative force. But if it doesn't— if it's not directed anywhere, it can become quite overwhelming. Hmm. And it can take you down the wrong direction. And it's surprising how many— and maybe more so with comedy, because the work as a comedian, any performer does as a comedian, is very personal. It's very revelatory. But you have this tremendous drive anyway. But let's not come away from the point or the aspect of loss of energy and where do you put that. But you, when I was talking about separation, loss, what that was like, you said you did feel and experience that when you were traveling. What was that like for you? How did you cope with separation from one— what was it, one job to another, one country to another? How did you cope with that? Well, I think that's where the comedian comes in and where the clown comes in. It's because I've always had this ability to talk, talk my way around things, or talk myself into friendship groups, or, you know, I'm not afraid to be on my own and approach people. I might be fearful of starting something new that's unknown to me, but I will always take a deep breath and dive right in and feel the fear and do it anyway. You know, it's even like going to Brazil. It was like I didn't know what was to expect there, what I was going to do, what would await me, but I thought, well, let's go. It'll be, if not anything, a great adventure. Yeah, but what's your mindset here? Because most people, when they travel, they travel in pairs or groups. What's your mindset that you go on your own? Is it because you think, oh, there's nobody else that wants to go? I want to do this and people aren't around, or nobody else is available? Or do you have your own timeline that you live by? I must get this done and I need to get it done in this way for myself. And you motivate yourself and you drive yourself forward. I think it's all of the above. And that's not a sort of, you know, cheap way to get out of the question, but it's, it's, it's all of the above. It's, you know, when I set my mind on something that I want to do, and I think in life in order to move forward, you have to move away. You have to move away from, from where you are. You have to leave the shore. And if, you know, you want to come on this journey with me, then great, but if not, I'm off. And I've never been one to plateau in life, and I think we should always be, all of us, moving forward. And really, you know, you are a different person in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s, and you need to move, to move along with that. And I think the thought of staying behind has always filled me with more fear than the thought of the unknown moving forward. Yes, so moving forward. If that makes sense. Yes, totally. And the drive— what about success? Is success part of your DNA? Would you, would you sing if you found that the audience didn't respond well? Would you just carry on regardless? Because I know singers that do album after album after album, and when they perform, they're good. They're not great, they're good. People like them, they engage with them, but they don't stand out. Would you continue? How important is success to you? Well, it depends how you define success because then if we take it way back to the teachers when I was 17 and, you know, deciding where I was, what I was going to do at university, they measured success in terms of fame. But success is not necessarily that. Success is being your authentic self creatively, is being good at what you do. Like, a celebrity was a celebrity because they were celebrated for being really good at what they did, a great singer or a great actor. And, you know, some of my favorite artists are not necessarily, you know, multi-million pound successful household names or anything like that. So success for me is being good at what you do and being respected by people in your genre, both fellow creatives and audiences alike. And success for me would be to be able to make a living from this. Yeah. To be able to do it and to do it more. And I love doing a little show in front of 30 people. That's really intimate and you have a real sort of connection with them that you can't achieve with a larger audience, but my goodness, put me in front of 3,000 people and I'm in my element. Absolutely in my element. So how do you cope physically with the gruelling aspect of performance? Because, you know, you take somebody like Mick Jagger, now Mick Jagger keeps fit all the time in order to keep on stage for that period of time. How do you physically cope? Well, I'd say that's probably the one area that could do with a bit of improvement, especially post-pandemic. Yeah, I think that's true for everybody, isn't it? Yeah, with my COVID belt. Yeah, but just the energy to keep going, because you can't start with one song. I mean, I saw Lisa Minnelli, Liza Minnelli, perform, um, actually now 10 years ago, but she was sensational. And it was at a charity event, and right from the word go, she was on the ball. She was performing to everybody with such skill, sophistication, and energy from the beginning to the end. She didn't let up. And that is this joy of somebody in the audience like myself watching. But you have to do that. How do you do that? What keeps you going? Is it the audience energy that feeds you? Something takes over, something kicks in, something always— because I've been, you know, oh gosh, oh, I'm exhausted, or how am I going to get through this tonight? Oh, I don't know how I'm going to even find a voice. Oh, and you know, I'll look at myself in the mirror, I can look like Nosferatu in a Ginger Fright wig, and I'm thinking, oh, how am I going to make this work, and somehow it just seems to kick in, you know, it really does. And yeah, you feed off that energy in the same way they, they feed off you, and, and if it's not working, then you've got to find something, a way to make it work. And I'm actually reading Miriam Margóilers' biography at the moment, which is wonderful. And yesterday I was actually reading the chapter about being on stage, and she says, you know, many people call it different things, the magic. Some people call it the duende, you know, in flamenco, that would come down on you like a spirit and take over you. Philippe Gaullier in Paris used to call it your little clown would dance around you. And she would say that you can't compel it and you can't control it. You just have to feel your way. Feel it. You have to feel the audience's energy and response with every inch of your body. And then she said, make yourself available. Make yourself available for that. Open yourself up to it. Yeah, that's it. It's when you get up there, you've just got to make yourself available. And it's like, it's like anything, that adrenaline kicks in. Of course it does. And whereas before we'd run away from a lion, now we're just— that adrenaline kicks in and gives you what you need to get through that performance. You can come off afterwards and be the next day, Maria, after some performances, I feel like I've been hit by a truck. I can imagine. Physically, physically, because it does physically exhaust, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. But somehow, whatever happens, whatever you're— whether you're channeling something, if it's the adrenaline, if it's the communion between performer and audience, absolutely, the participants. Something's gone wrong in your life. Oh, sorry, I think something went wrong with my connection there as well, so sorry, Ms. Butler. If there's been a bad day or something's gone wrong, as it does, something can happen to a member of our family or something's gone wrong, how, what is your self-talk to get on stage and how does it make you feel once you come off stage? I suppose it's that. I did have last year that my auntie passed away who I was very, very close to, and I discovered a few hours before a performance. It was a small online performance, and in that instance I couldn't do it. I didn't do it. It wouldn't feel right, but In other— yeah, I suppose it's just like that Dunkirk spirit, the show must go on. Chris Rock talks about getting depression, and he said, you know, sometimes he's depressed, and everybody has their own story for depression, whether it's, you know, long-standing, or whether it's situational, or event-led. Something can happen, but he says he gets on stage and pow! It all changes. Once he gets that first laugh, he's up and he's away. Does it take that? Does it take the first roar from the audience to take that away from you? Yes, I think so. It does. It can't not. It can't. Because you suddenly, you lose yourself in that. The same way an audience can lose themselves in a performance, you know. In a film, in a song, you do the same in your performance. You know, it can still be there when you come off. And I've seen it with players as well, you know, going through difficult moments or having troubles in their personal life. Something that, you know, without sort of going into details, a couple of incidents with different players where something horrendous happened to them hours before a huge game, and they went on that pitch and played out of their skins, scoring goals, taking the team through. Something, I guess, just kicks in. Kicks in, yeah. So I always feel that somebody like Amy Winehouse went through such a difficult time because fundamentally she performed on her own, although she had a big orchestra at times, eventually because of the system and the label she was with. Not— this isn't apportioning blame to anybody because that's how, just how it happened, that she was fundamentally a solo singer. Is it harder to be a solo singer on stage as, as a woman as well? Um, it's, it's interesting you should ask that because, you know, Bajana is, is essentially, it's, it's a band. But my understanding now of what a band is and what I thought it was when I started is very different. You know, I had this romantic idea that, you know, a band, you were gonna be like a band of brothers and yeah, we're gonna make music together and we're gonna go on the road. You know, like this sort of teenage rock star dream. And, you know, it's not like that at all. And, you know, the musicians are very skillful, very professional musicians, but, you know, there's none of that sort of teenage spirit attached to it that I thought came as standard. So they're like colleagues and go away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and so like, like my colleagues in the office, I'm not going to go, hey, yeah, we're going on a road trip, baby, and, you know, come around to my house, then we're going to watch football all day. Like, not come around to my house and we're going to listen to jazz all afternoon, you know. And that's what I thought all these cool cats did, you know. I was going to immerse myself in this world of music and musicians, and I was going to learn, and I was going to meet so many inspiring people and, you know, writing all day. And no, it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. So do you have to galvanise them? You have to organise, do you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much kind of, yeah, more logistical approach to it. And that's when I draw on the skills, obviously, from, from work, from the proverbial day job. It sounds quite natural to you. It sounds as if you've got that that as a natural skill. So we're coming to the— almost to the end. Let— where can everybody find you? I mean, you've got such a wonderful energy, and I know there's going to be a tremendous success this year. We've got to have great success, and I know you'll be one of those that we'll all be talking about. What is your website? It's, uh, biana— b-a-i-a-n-a— b-a-i-a-n-a .co.uk. Brilliant. We're on all streaming services if you want to go and listen to our music, or you can listen to some unreleased stuff on our SoundCloud as well. Yeah, that's Baiyana Band. And our social media is, is where we post absolutely everything, on Facebook or Instagram. That's Baiyana Band. That's B-A-I-A-N-A B-A-N-D. So follow us on @byannaband and there's links to absolutely everything on there. And we're bringing out our new single in March that's called Saudade de Samba. Fantastic. What I'm so excited about is that we started the year with— in a conversation with you because you're bringing a totally different feel to this year and I think it's going to be a marker in the sand for what follows for all of us. This excitement, the color, getting back up, making something happen very much combines Brazil, the music, you, your personality, your skills, all come together to create a success. And I know you will be successful. Laura Doyle, thank you so much for joining in this conversation. It's been such a pleasure. My name is Dr. Mary Kempinski. This is Your Mind Matters. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you, enjoyed it.